LIQUORICE PUDDING by Nigella  serves 2  https://www.nigella.com/recipes/liquorice-pudding 

Both extinguish and distinguish, which, apart from some unimportant derivatives like 'interdistinguish', are the only English words ending in '-tinguish' are derived from the Latin verb stinguĕre, 'to quench', 'to extinguish', of which the past participle form is stinctus.  OED says in its etymology for the obsolete form distingue that stinguĕre was "originally 'to prick or stick', but found only in sense 'to extinguish'".  http://hull-awe.org.uk/index.php/Distinguish_-_extinguish 

Napoleon is said to have gone through more than 100ml of his lime and rosemary cologne in baths and dabs every day.  Copies of this invigorating scent are still a bestselling formula and the political writings of a Renaissance diplomat, the Italian philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli, help explain why.  In his 1532 treatise The Prince, he famously argued that one’s benevolent ends may justify the use of any necessarily fraudulent or violent means, and that leaders ultimately do better to be feared than loved.  Take the book by best-selling Canadian mystery writer Louise Penny, for example.  All the Devils are Here is the sixteenth installment in a series she began publishing in 2006, wherein Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Quebec Provincial Police always succeeds in finding out who the murderer is and why they did it.  Penny pours on the perfume in a variety of meaningful ways, situating Gamache in Paris for the birth of his grandchild when his godfather is nearly killed by a suspicious hit and run.  Sixty pages in, readers are introduced to a highly intelligent engineer who reeks of Dior’s Sauvage.  Excerpted from Perfume by Megan Volpert, available via Bloomsbury.  https://lithub.com/how-perfume-becomes-an-evocative-clue-for-mystery-writers/ 

persiflage noun : frivolous bantering talk : light raillery  Synonyms for persiflage:  backchat, badinage,  banter, chaff, give-and-take, jesting, joshing, raillery, repartee  English speakers picked up persiflage from French in the 18th century.  Its ancestor is the French verb persifler, which means "to banter" and was formed from the prefix per-, meaning "thoroughly," plus siffler, meaning "to whistle, hiss, or boo."  Siffler in turn derived from the Latin verb sibilare, meaning "to whistle or hiss." By the way, sibilare is also the source of sibilant, a word linguists use to describe sounds like those made by "s" and "sh" in sash. That Latin root also underlies the verb sibilate, meaning "to hiss" or "to pronounce with or utter an initial sibilant."  https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/persiflage 

Peanut Butter No-Bake Cookies  https://www.livewellbakeoften.com/peanut-butter-no-bake-cookies/ 

Peanut Butter-Chocolate No-Bake Cookies  https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchen/peanut-butter-chocolate-no-bake-cookies-recipe-2015085 

Air Fryer Granola http://thedeliciousplate.com/air-fryer-granola/ 

BEST BOOKS UNDER 200 PAGES and BEST BOOKS UNDER 100 PAGES by Rachel Brittain  https://bookriot.com/best-books-under-200-pages/

 “Who’s On First?” is arguably (pun intended) the most famous comedy routine of all time.  “Time” magazine proclaimed it the “Best Comedy Sketch of the 20th Century” in 1999.  The Greater Los Angeles Press Club, with great foresight, declared the same almost 50 years earlier.  It was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown in 1956, where it has played in a continuous loop since 1967.  The skit is a cultural touchstone that has inspired homages and derivatives using the names of rock groups such as The Who and Yes, as well as foreign and domestic leaders like Premier Hu, James Watt, and Yassir Arafat.  Ask Google Assistant or Siri “Who’s on first?” and it will reply, “Yes, he is,” or “Correct, Who is on first.”  High school students translate it and perform it in French or Spanish, and it has even been performed in American Sign Language.  The routine has also transcended comedy as a metaphor for miscommunication and double-talk in business, politics, and everyday life.  It turns up without fail on the sports pages whenever a baseball club has trouble filling a position.  “Who’s On First?” is one of the lasting legacies of the comedy team of Bud Abbott (1897-1974) and Lou Costello (1906-1959).  (Another is their landmark horror comedy “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein” [1948], which was inducted into the National Film Registry in 2001.)  Bud, the straight man, and Lou, the comedian, teamed up in burlesque in 1936 and rose to rank among the top movie stars and highest-paid performers of the 1940s.   In recent years “Who’s On First?” has been referenced in dozens of television shows, adapted for a board game in the 1970s, and played a pivotal role in the 1988 film “Rain Man.”  But life finally imitated art in September 2007, when Los Angeles Dodgers shortstop Chin-Lung Hu, a late-season call up from the minors, got his first major league hit.  Dodger announcer Vin Scully declared, “Shades of Abbott and Costello.  I can finally say, ‘Hu’s on first.’”  Read six-page essay by Ron Palumbo at https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-recording-preservation-board/documents/WhosOnFirst-Palumbo.pdf 

Rich Strike pulled a huge upset during the 2022 Kentucky Derby by winning against 80-1 odds.  The 3-year-old thoroughbred, along with Venezuelan jockey Sonny Leon, became the second biggest longshot to win in the 148-year history of the event.  There had not been a bigger upset in over 100 years.  Isabel Gonzalez  Find a full list of the 10 Kentucky Derby winners with the longest odds at  https://www.cbssports.com/general/news/kentucky-derby-2022-the-ten-biggest-underdogs-to-win-the-run-for-the-roses-as-a-long-shot/ 

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is an epistolary novel–it’s made up of letters, diaries, telegrams, newspaper clippings.  Between May 3 and November 10, 2022, Dracula Daily will post a newsletter each day that something happens to the characters, in the same timeline that it happens to them.  Sign up at https://www.openculture.com/2022/04/dracula-daily-get-the-classic-novel-dracula-delivered-to-your-email-inbox-in-small-chunks.html   Thank you Muse reader!  See also Christopher Lee Reads Five Horror Classics: Dracula, Frankenstein, The Phantom of the Opera & More at https://www.openculture.com/2016/03/christopher-lee-reads-five-horror-classics.html 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2531  May 9, 2022

elephant trap  noun  (plural elephant traps) (figuratively)  A trap which can easily be avoided by a competent person, and thus proves the incompetence of anybody trapped by it.  (chess)  Elephant Trap:  faulty attempt by White to win a pawn in a popular variation of the Queen's Gambit Declined, which is generally only effective against inexperienced players.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/elephant_trap#English 

Macarons and macaroons are two completely different cookies.  Macaroons have an extra O in the name and are coconut cookies.  Macarons are delicate sandwich cookies.  It’s helpful to “age” the egg whites in the refrigerator for at least 24 hours prior to starting this recipe.  Why?  Egg whites that have been separated and set aside in advance have a chance to relax, which improves their elasticity during the whipping process.  Elasticity is certainly beneficial when you’re trying to whip egg whites into a lofty volume.  I recommend taking the 5-10 minutes to separate your egg whites, cover, and refrigerate them 1 day in advance.  Bring them to room temperature before you begin the recipe.  Sally McKenney  Find recipe at https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/french-macarons/ 

Measuring 843 acres, Central Park is larger in land mass than the principality of Monaco which is just under 500 acres.  Despite the large scale of the park in relation to the tiny nation, there are actually parks in New York City that are even bigger including Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens (898 acres) and the Staten Island Greenbelt which comprises a 2,800 acre network of connected parks and trails.  Central Park is on a rectangular plot bounded by Fifth and Eighth Avenues on the west and east, and 59th and 110th streets on the north and south.  The perimeter of the park stretches six miles and contains within it twenty-six baseball fields, seven bodies of water, and fifty-eight miles of pathways.  NICOLE SARANIERO  https://untappedcities.com/2019/04/25/10-fun-facts-about-nycs-central-park/ 

Central Park was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, America's greatest landscape architect, and Calvert Vaux in 1858.  (Olmsted and Vaux also designed Morningside Park in Harlem; Riverside Park, flanking the Hudson River; and Brooklyn's Prospect Park.)  Built between 1858 and 1873, the park comprises six percent of Manhattan's land area (843 acres) and is 2.5 miles long and a half-mile wide.  The most frequented urban park in the nation, it attracts over 15 million visitors yearly.  It is the largest work of art in New York City.  Central Park's 26,000 trees and 132 acres of woodlands and meadows are both a haven for people and a natural habitat for wildlife.  Water covers another 150 acres.  There are 58 miles of pedestrian pathways that weave through an interlocking tapestry of meadows, lakes, forests and gardens.  There are 4.7 miles of bridle trail, 21 playgrounds, 30 tennis courts, 26 baseball diamonds, two skating rinks, a swimming pool and a 1.6-mile running track around the reservoir.  The park is open 6 a.m.-1 a.m. daily. Facilities within the park have varying hours.  https://www.nyc-arts.org/organizations/2581/central-park  See also https://www.ny.com/articles/centralpark.html 

Benjamin Franklin was many things in his lifetime:  a printer, a postmaster, an ambassador, an author, a scientist, a Founding Father.  Above all, he was an inventor, creating solutions to common problems, innovating new technology, and even making life a little more musical.  See pictures and descriptions of some of Franklin’s most significant inventions at https://www.fi.edu/benjamin-franklin/inventions 

Benjamin Franklin discovered the difference between conductors and insulators of electricity.  He used a device called a Leyden jar to hold and discharge electricity—even using one to kill a turkey for a feast.  Wiring together charged plates, and later jars, he created and named the first electrical battery.  http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2012113_2011976_2011964,00.html 

"Gray" and "grey" are both correct spellings of the word for the neutral or achromatic color—a color “without color" between black and white, like a cloud-covered sky, ashes, or lead.  Used for centuries, both "gray" and "grey" come from the Old English word grǽg and are related to the Dutch word grauw and the German word grau.  The main distinction between the two spellings is simply a matter of geographical custom.  While both spellings are commonly used throughout the English-speaking world, the use of "gray" in the United States versus "grey" in most other nations has remained constant. 

In proper names:  If someone’s last name is “Grey,” it cannot be spelled “Gray.”  For example, the popular Earl Grey tea is named after Charles Grey, the second Earl of Grey and prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1830 to 1834.

The dog breed:  The dog breed "greyhound" can never be spelled “grayhound.”  The same is true for the Greyhound bus service company, which is named for the dog breed.

As a measure of energy:  Last but certainly not least (especially to physicists) is the scientific measure of energy called the "gray."  One gray is equal to about one joule of energy radiated by the ionization of one kilogram of matter.  The gray replaced the rad as a standard measuring unit of radiation energy in 1975.  One gray is equal to 100 rads, and it can only be spelled with an "a."  Robert Longley  https://www.thoughtco.com/gray-or-grey-4154508 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2530  May 6, 2022

Ever heard of the pawpaw tree?  Ever tasted its fruit?  Did you even know it had fruit?   Though it does not have the name recognition of an apple or peach tree, the pawpaw tree has a long and important history in the United States, one associated with everything from nutrition to folklore.  Pawpaws have the largest fruit of any native tree.  In the mid-sixteenth century, Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto likely observed Mississippi Valley Native Americans growing and eating pawpaws.  News of this exotic fruit subsequently spread to Europe.  Confusion over the fruit’s name started immediately.  One theory is that the Spanish mistakenly named the fruit “papaya” because of its green skin and orange flesh similar to a papaya.  Some think it is a muddled English spelling of a different Caribbean fruit.  What is known is that the tree’s scientific name (Asimina triloba) comes from the Powhatan word Assimina, which a Jamestown settler transcribed in 1612 as “wheat plum.”  Pawpaws extend across eastern portions of the United States between Northern Michigan and Georgia.  The pawpaw tree produces a nutritious and delicious fruit in the summer which is actually a berry.  The pawpaw berry is also called a “custard apple,” a name derived from the creamy texture of the fruit.  It is said to taste like a mix between a banana and a pear, with a hint of vanilla.  Jessica Brode, edited by Kayleigh Waters  https://gardens.si.edu/learn/blog/way-down-yonder-in-the-paw-paw-patch/  See also https://www.bethsnotesplus.com/2013/05/paw-paw-patch.html and https://www.facebook.com/jtsdmusic/videos/4th-grade-paw-paw-patch/429661111274340/ 

Kimchi grilled cheese  A lot of people burn their grilled cheese, so I figured out a few tips on how to make a perfect grilled cheese every time. First, make sure everything is hot before adding the cheese.  That way, the cheese will melt quickly and your bread won’t burn.  The second tip is to add the butter last.  Adding it last gives the grilled cheese a nice finishing buttery flavor without burning the bread.  You can use this recipe method for normal grilled cheese without the kimchi, and it will still be great.  And if any of you can’t handle spicy kimchi, then rinse off the spiciness in cold water, squeeze out excess water, chop it up, and use it.  It will still have a crispy-crunchy texture.  posted by Maangchi  https://www.maangchi.com/recipe/kimchi-grilled-cheese   

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

Words coined after people, we call them eponyms:  from Greek epi- (upon) + -onym (name).  The English language is chockful of them:  boycott, dunce, and tawdry, to name a few.

Pyrrhonism  (PIR-uh-niz-uhm)  noun  Extreme or absolute skepticism.  After Pyrrho, a Greek philosopher, c. 360-270 BCE.  Earliest documented use:  1603.

litmus test  (LIT-muhs test)  noun  1.  A test in which a single indicator prompts the decision.  2.  A test to determine if a solution is acidic or alkaline.  From Old Norse litmosi (dye-moss), from litr (dye) + mosi (moss).  Earliest documented use:  1824. 

The 12 most unforgettable descriptions of food in literature by Adrienne LaFrance  Read descriptions of food in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, Under the Jaguar Sun by Italo Calvino, I Remember Nothing: And Other Reflections by Nora Ephron, Chicken Soup With Rice: A Book of Months by Maurice Sendak, Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust, Revenge of the Lawn by Richard Brautigan, Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth, Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh, Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert, After the Plague by T. C. Boyle, Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, and The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway at https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2022/03/unforgettable-food-scenes-books-haruki-murakami/627601/ 

Rick and Laura Brown are at the forefront of a field called experimental archaeology—recreating ancient objects using the tools and techniques of those eras.  Their main goal is education—teaching their students at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design to recreate age-old monuments and more.  “The object itself is loaded with information,” Rick says.  “You don’t understand it until you reverse-engineer it and experience the process.”  Fascinated by New England’s architectural history, they joined the Timber Framers Guild, a 1,400-member group devoted to the old-fashioned craft of building structures with beams and joints held together by wooden pegs.  In 1998, Grigg Mullen Jr., a civil engineer and retired professor at the Virginia Military Institute who has worked with the Browns since their earliest projects, put out a call for volunteers to recreate a full-sized medieval trebuchet, a kind of catapult and the period’s most fearsome weapon.  The Browns took part in the workshop, and on the flight back to Boston, Rick sat next to PBS “Nova” producer Michael Barnes, who asked Rick if he thought he could recruit timber framers from the workshop to help assemble more weapons for a “Nova” program, “Secrets of Lost Empires.”  The show culminated with participants raising two full-sized trebuchets next to a castle on the shores of Loch Ness in Scotland.  The burning of the Notre-Dame cathedral in April 2019 inspired the Browns and their students to launch a new, international educational project.  After two-thirds of the cathedral’s roof and most of its spire were consumed by the flames, Carpenters Without Borders, a French group, held that the structure should be rebuilt using medieval methods, an argument the group eventually won.  The Browns offered to help demonstrate the potential of experimental archaeology in this singular case—a gesture of goodwill and solidarity.  In response, the French carpenters sent them the plans for Truss 6, a supporting structure that hung over the choir.  Estimated to have been built in 1180, the truss was one of the oldest features of a cathedral that took nearly two centuries to build starting in 1163.  Douglas Starr  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/americans-helping-rebuild-notre-dame-12th-century-tools-180979794/ 

On May 4th of an undetermined year, a young girl told an immortal truth about literature:  “‘what is the use of a book,’ thought Alice ‘without pictures or conversations?’”  This was, of course, directly before Alice’s own contribution to the worlds of literature and internet lingo:  going down the rabbit hole.  Alice descended into Wonderland on the birthday of Alice Pleasance Hargreaves (née Liddell), the inspiration for the character.  The Liddells were friends with the Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll), and Alice and her two sisters heard the first versions of the soon-to-be iconic story on a “golden afternoon” in 1862, in a rowboat with Dodgson and his friend Robinson Duckworth.  The story—originally titled Alice's Adventures Under Ground—was published by Macmillan as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in November 1865, and promptly became “the publishing sensation of Christmas 1865.”  Since then, the book has never gone out of print, and has been translated into more than 100 languages, including Latin.  Literary Hub  May 1, 2022 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2529  May 4, 2022

From:  Curtis Reeves  Subject:  Travesty  Believe it or not, travesty makes its appearance in Rule 5.09(b)(10) in the Official Rules of Major League Baseball:  Rule 5.09(b)(10):  Any runner is out when, after he has acquired legal possession of a base, he runs the bases in reverse order for the purpose of confusing the defense or making a travesty of the game.  I wonder if there are rules in other sports that reference travesty.  AWADmailIssue 1031 

A ha-ha is a recessed landscape design element that creates a vertical barrier (particularly on one side) while preserving an uninterrupted view of the landscape beyond from the other side.  The design can include a turfed incline that slopes downward to a sharply vertical face (typically a masonry retaining wall).  Ha-has are used in landscape design to prevent access to a garden by, for example, grazing livestock, without obstructing views.  In security design, the element is used to deter vehicular access to a site while minimizing visual obstruction.  See pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha-ha 

Gotham City, or simply Gotham, is a fictional city appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics, best known as the home of the superhero Batman and his close allies.  The city was first identified as Batman's place of residence in Batman #4 (December 1940) and has since been the primary setting for stories featuring the character.  Gotham City is traditionally depicted as being located in New Jersey.  Gotham's look and atmosphere was primarily influenced by New York City.  Batman co-creator Bill Finger chose the name "Gotham" so that the residents of any city could identify with it.  Locations used as inspiration or filming locations for Gotham City in the live-action Batman films and television series have included Chicago, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, New York City, Newark, London, Glasgow, and Liverpool.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotham_City 

TRADITIONAL ENGLISH SCONES  Recipe makes eight servings—consistency is similar to biscuits.  https://www.bakefromscratch.com/traditional-english-scones/  Bake from Scratch is a bi-monthly publication from Hoffman Media.  

Dystopia or the “bad place”:  dystopian films

Metropolis (1927) Fritz Lang  A cult film by Fritz Lang based on the novel by Thea von Harbow.  It is considered one of the greatest silent films in history.  The action takes place in the future.  The huge futuristic city is divided into two parts--the upper Paradise, where the "masters of life" live, and the underground industrial Hell, the dwelling of workers reduced to the position of appendages of giant machines. 

1984 (1984) Michael Radford  British dystopian film based on George Orwell’s novel “1984” in the year to which the events taking place in it are timed.  The director of the film was quite faithful to the letter and spirit of the original source and quite impressively recreated on the screen the environment of a totalitarian state under the leadership of Big Brother.  In order to suppress the mass unrest of Oceania, the ruling party recreates the past and the present.  Every citizen is watched incessantly, everyone is brainwashed with the help of television.

451 degrees Fahrenheit (1966) Francois Truffaut  “Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which paper ignites and burns.”  An artistic film by the outstanding French director Francois Truffaut about a dystopian future.  Screening of one of the most famous works of American science fiction writer Ray Bradbury.  The novel describes a society based on popular culture and consumer thinking, in which all books that make you think about life are subject to burning, and keeping books is a crime.  Read descriptions of 10 dystopian films at https://vk.com/wall-52526415_46612?lang=en 

nickel-and-dime  adjective  used to describe something that is not important, usually because it does not involve much money

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/nickel-and-dime 

The common merganser (North American) or goosander (Eurasian) (Mergus merganser) is a large seaduck of rivers and lakes in forested areas of Europe, Asia, and North America.  The common merganser eats mainly fish.  It nests in holes in trees.  The first formal description of the common merganser was by Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the 10th edition of his Systema Naturae.  He introduced the current binomial name Mergus merganser.  The genus name is a Latin word used by Pliny and other Roman authors to refer to an unspecified waterbird, and merganser is derived from mergus and anser, Latin for "goose".  In 1843 John James Audubon used the name "Buff-breasted Merganser" in addition to "goosander" in his book The Birds of America.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_merganser 

Mergansers eat fish, giving their meat a strong flavor that many people find unpalatable.  The article recommends marinating overnight in brandy and seasonings, but even a good, long alcohol soak can't rid the beast of another drawback of its fishy diet—its high levels of PCBs in some waterways.  Lisa Breman  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-game-less-eaten-102101393/ 

MAY DATES TO REMEMBER  Tuesday, May 3:  Two Different Colored Shoes Day; Sunday, May 15:  Las Vegas founded in 1905;  Wednesday, May 18:  Mt. St. Helen erupts, 1980;  Saturday, May 21:  Charles Lindbergh completes first nonstop Atlantic flight, 1927;  Wednesday, May 25:  Tap Dance Day;  Saturday, May 28:  Volkswagen founded, 1937; Tuesday, May 31:  World No-Tobacco Day 

maelstrom noun  A large and violent whirlpool.  (figuratively) A chaotic or turbulent situation.  American author Edgar Allan Poe’s short story A Descent into the Maelström appeared in the May 1841 issue of Graham’s Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine, which was actually published in April.  Wiktionary 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2528  May 2, 2022